Police Investigating Three More Apparent Suicides at Foxconn Factories

It's been awhile since we've heard about worker suicides taking place at Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision) and we hoped it would stay that way. Unfortunately, it appears that three more individuals may have decided to end their lives, something that has been an ongoing problem at Foxconn amid reports of poor working conditions.

These are three separate incidents that occurred within the past four weeks, according to PCWorld. The first occured on April 27 when a worker employed at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou fell to his death. It happened again at the same plant on May 14. In between those two incidents, a worker at Foxconn's Chongqing facility was found dead on May 11. Police are investigating all three incidents, though Foxconn says the two deaths in Zhengzhou had nothing to do with work.

"Suicide is a complex issue, there is no one reason that can ever be cited for any such incident," Foxconn said in a statement.

These latest incidents come on the heels of an audit by the U.S.-based Fair Labor Association (FLA), which noted "significant progress" in reducing employee working time to 60 hours per week at three separate facilities in Shenzhen and Chengdu. However, Foxconn's goal is to reduce that number to 49 hours, which it hopes to do by July of this year.

Foxconn employs over 1.2 million people in China. The company manufacturers electronic devices for Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and several other well known companies. One worker who wished not to be identified stated that "the pressure from the job and also some personal problems" likely caused the suicides, according to PCWorld.

"We work in a closed environment and people can't vent their issues. So instead, workers go jump down from buildings and die," the worker said.